Can I Get a Witness?

Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  While the official version of the Bible for Catholics is the Nova Vulgata, the New Vulgate, which is Latin, the Gospels themselves were written in Greek.  I took one year of Biblical Greek in Major Seminary, which has helped me with clues as to the meanings of words.  While I can’t really read Greek, certain words still stick out.  Today’s Gospel is a great example.  The Latin, which we heard, talks about testimonium, which in English we translate as “witness.”  But in the Greek, our Lord says that the Apostles (to whom He is speaking in the Upper Room) 𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜐𝜌𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀.  Now, some of you are joking that this is Greek to you (in fact, it’s Greek to everyone; it’s Greek).  But that word is connected to the Greek word, whence we get the English word “martyr.”  To be a witness, in Greek, was to be a martyr.  We now associate martyr with the shedding of blood, but the original meaning simply connected to telling the truth as a witness.
    But Christ does not only call the Apostles to be martyrs.  He calls us, all of us, to be martyrs.  Certainly, most of the Apostles, with the exception of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, did shed their blood it witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  But dying for the faith was the consequence of their earlier martyrdom, their earlier witness by the spreading of the Gospel by word and by deed.  And God calls us, too, to witness to the Gospel, whether it means the red martyrdom of shedding our blood, or the white martyrdom of dying to our own wills to live for God and bring others into the truth that Christ revealed.  
    We cannot, however, live (or die) as martyrs on our own power.  We need the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to witness to our faith in the Lord.  Without the Holy Spirit, weakness could easily take over, and we could walk away from Christ rather than stay strong in the face of adversity.  And Christ clearly says we will experience adversity.  He tells His Apostles that others will kick them out of synagogues, and even will kill them.  And those who kill them will think they are doing God’s will.  We take for granted that Catholicism separated from Judaism.  But at this point, at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, the Apostles knew nothing other than Judaism, and did not realize fully that Christ would call them to be the foundation of His Church, His new assembly (the Greek word is 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜀𝜎𝜄𝛼), the fulfillment of what God had promised the Chosen People.  

    So do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  I’m not only talking about these nine days between the Ascension of the Lord and Pentecost, the first novena which the Apostles and Blessed Mother and other disciples prayed.  But outside these days, do we ask for the strength, wisdom, and other gifts of the Holy Spirit?  There was a heresy in the Church in the fourth century called the pneumatomachianism.  Pneumatomachians did not believe that the Holy Spirit is truly God.  This teaching was condemned by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  But are we closet pneumatomachians?  
    How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?  Do we treat Him as God, or simply an extra add on that we don’t really need?  Each Sunday we profess in the Creed that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life (Dominum et Vivificantem).  Those are divine titles, as “Lord” is the acceptable way for the Jews to say God rather than saying His sacred Name, revealed to Moses in the tetragrammaton.  We profess that with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit is adored and glorified (Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur).  But I think that sometimes we fear reaching out to the Holy Spirit.  We see charismatics, both those in and outside the visible Church, and we become uneasy, because we’re not used to speaking in tongues, or having words of prophecy, or raising our hands when we pray.  And while the Holy Spirit can still move people to speak in tongues, or reveal prophetic words, or even have us raise our hands in prayer at time, those are special gifts which are meant to build up the body of Christ, not the usual gifts that the Holy Spirit always gives: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
    We do need the Holy Spirit to help us to explain to others the truths of our faith, especially in ways that will convince them, which can vary from person to person.  And just because someone knows the truth, does not mean that they will accept it.  The Holy Spirit helps us go beyond head knowledge to having people accept in their heart as well that Jesus is Lord and that His life leads to happiness and heaven.  The Holy Spirit gives us the courage or fortitude not to cheat our boss or our employees, to use words that befit our Christian dignity, and to love others as Christ loves us, to the best of our ability.  Those are the ways that we live as martyrs, as witnesses.
    You don’t have to know Greek to be a martyr.  You don’t even have to shed your blood to be a martyr.  To be a martyr is to be a witness, and it is a vocation for all those who follow Christ.  But martyrdom, of the red or white variety, is only possible with the strength of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism, and strengthened through Confirmation.  Make it your goal, not only this week, but especially this week, to ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, so that you can be a martyr, a witness, to Christ.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Simple and Complex

 Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  How is it that the most fundamental part of our religion, the teaching that defines us as a faith–our belief in the Most Holy Trinity, one God and three divine Persons–is so hard to explain?  We often think of what is most basic as what is the simplest.  But, when it comes to our faith, that’s not quite right.
    Followers of Christ have struggled with this teaching from early on.  The heretic Arius, in order to uphold the oneness of God, held that Jesus was not really God.  Another heresy, pneumatomachianism, taught that the Holy Spirit was not really God.  Others failed when trying to explain the Most Holy Trinity, by saying that the different Persons were simply different phases of the one God, like water can be a solid, liquid or gas (that was the heresy of modalism).  Or another failure was that God was like the sun, where God the Father is like the sun itself, and Jesus is the the light, and the Holy Spirit is the heat (another version of Arianism).  Or there’s the heresy of partialism, which taught that the three divine Persons are each parts of the one Godhead.  Or (and I don’t know the name for this) the very vogue teaching that we can change the names of the Persons to be less restrictive (as in God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier).  All of those are really intriguing ways that we have gotten the teaching of the Most Holy Trinity wrong.  
    So what we do believe?  We believe in one God, who is also three divine Persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–co-equal in glory, majesty, and power, yet not three gods, but One.  The Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Holy Spirit, nor is the Holy Spirit the Father, and yet the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all one God.

    We struggle because we are finite–limited, while God is infinite–unlimited.  So we rely on what our infinite God has revealed to our finite minds.  We need the Holy Spirit, whom we celebrated last week and whom we celebrate this week.  And we stick to what the Holy Spirit has revealed, because the Most Holy Trinity is the foundation for all life, but especially for our life, and even more than that, for our salvation.  If we get who the Trinity is wrong, we get who we are wrong, and we mess-up our connection to salvation.  Recently, a handful of priests have been discovered to have done great damage by changing the way babies are baptized (most often, changing the words).  While some question why this matters, the Church asserts that words do matter, and if baptism is the beginning of our saving relationship with God (which it is), then if we get the beginning wrong, the rest of it cannot follow.  
    But The Trinity is not just the beginning.  It should be our day-to-day connection as well.  Our spiritual life should be connected to all three divine Persons if we are to live in the fulness of grace that God desires for us.  We often say “God” when we mean God the Father, and He is often the one to whom we address our prayers.  But we should also pray to and through Christ, because He is consubstantial with the Father.  And we should not forget to turn in prayer to the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and Giver of life,…who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.”  Our prayers at Mass often highlight this, as we most often pray to the Father, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.”  
    How do we guide our life by the Trinity?  One easy way is to read the revelation of the Trinity in the Sacred Scriptures.  How has God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, spoken to us in an inerrant way through the Bible?  What moral laws has God revealed that help us to be the best person that we can be?  Whether it’s the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and what Christ taught in the Gospels, or the teachings of St. Paul in the New Testament about not being greedy, or making false gods for ourselves, or being sexually immoral, those are great guidelines to know whether or not we are living in the reality that the Trinity intends.
    Another way to live our life by the Trinity is by love.  St. John wrote in his epistle that God is love, and the applies to each divine Person.  God the Father is love, God the Son is love, and God the Holy Spirit is love.  If we are to live in the best way possible, we are called to love others.  And that love, as the Trinity shows us, is always about sacrificing for the other, and leading the other into truth.  Our Lord sacrificed Himself so that we could go to heaven, in the full out-pouring of Himself in love.  And the Holy Spirit, our Lord taught, leads us into all truth, so that our love is not merely delight or affection, but is grounded in what is most real and the way that the Trinity created the world.  If we are living like a toddler, who loves as long as he gets what he wants, then that’s not the love of the Trinity, the love that will save us and make us truly happy.  If our expression of love is only about what feels good, rather than sacrificing, even when it’s quite painful, then that’s not the love of the Trinity, which would never do anything to endanger the other person.  
    In a way, the Trinity is as hard to describe as love is, even though the Trinity and love are foundational to life.  But because of the love of the Trinity, we get glimpses of who God is in Himself, which helps us to understand how He made us, and how we are called to live and what will make us truly happy.  When our love is off, when we try to redefine love, then we are not living the Trinitarian life.  And when our understanding of the Trinity is off, when we try to remake God in our own image, the way we act will not be truly loving.  Ground yourself in the life of the Trinity: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.